Andrew's Plug-ins

Reviewed by Geetesh Bajaj, July 18th 2006

Introduction

Installation

Once you get the full or demo versions of these plug-ins, all you need to do is unzip the plug-in (8bf) files and place them in Photoshop's plug-in folder. Make sure that you quit Photoshop before copying these files -- the plug-in will be available inside Photoshop's Filters menu the next time you use Photoshop.

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How To Use

Andrew's Plug-ins are a series of 19 Photoshop plug-in sets -- each set comprises several individual filters. Rather than explain the interface for every individual set or filter, I'm just going to explain a sample interface here since all filters do share the same interface. The sliders and options might differ from filter to filter -- but most of the options do work the same way.

In this sample tutorial, I am exploring the interface of a filter from one of the plug-ins in Series 03.

1. Open an image in Photoshop.
   
   
2. Choose Filter | AP-Blur | Blur - ShakeMix. (see Figure 1)
   
   
   Figure 1
   
   
3. This launches the interface (see Figure 2), which includes parameters for the selected effect.
   
   
   Figure 2
   
   The Interface is divided into four parts which are quite easy to use, as explained below:
   
   
   1. Parameters for the selected effect, which includes sliders with which the effect can be set as required.
      
      
   2. This part has blending modes and Advanced options so that you can save presets for future use. Reset sets all values back to their default settings, and Open preset allows you to open saved preset settings.
      
      
   3. Here you can set size for the thumbnail preview by using the zoom option, apply an effect to the image by choosing OK, to go back to the Photoshop environment without making any changes by clicking Cancel.
      
      The other four options Xtreme, Color, Blend and Gray are quick random effects, click them multiple times to see random variations -- this can cook up some great effects.
      
      
   4. The Preview area shows the changes as you apply them.

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